DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS
TEXTBOOK – 2.1, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, CHAPTER 3
2.1 THE IDEA OF A PERSONALITY TRAIT
Personality trait – differences among individuals in a typical tendency to behave, think or feel in some
conceptually related ways, across a variety of relevant situations and across some fairly long period of time
…Differences Among Individuals
• The description of an individual’s personality is meaningful only to the extent that it gives us, directly
or indirectly, a comparison with others
… In a Typical Tendency to Behave, Think, or Feel
• The likelihood of showing some behaviors or having some thoughts or feelings
• One may have a relatively strong inclination or predisposition to exhibit those behaviors, thoughts or
feelings
• It includes not only external or behavioral aspects, but also the internal aspects, shown by their
ideas and emotions
… In Some Conceptually Related Ways
• A trait is expressed by various behaviors, thoughts and feelings that appear to have some common
psychological element
• A trait can be expressed in ways that superficially appears to be quite different
• Behaviors can all look different from each other but might all reflect the same trait
… Across a Variety of Relevant Situations
• A personality trait is shown across a variety of settings in which people differ in trait-relevant
behavior
… Over Some Fairly Long Period of Time
• There is some pattern that can be observed over the long run
• The idea of a trait is that there is some reasonably stable, long-lasting tendency to show the relevant
pattern of behaviors
2.4 MEASURING TRAITS BY SELF- OR OBSERVER REPORT: STRUCTURED PERSONALITY
INVENTORIES
• Self and observer reports are the methods frequently used by psychologists
• Structured personality inventories – questionnaires that offer a predetermined set of options for
responding to various items
, • Unstructured personality inventories – an inventory that allows people to respond freely
• Most personality inventories assess several different personality traits
• Each trait is assessed by its own scale , which contains different items
o An individual’s response to the items of a given scale are averaged / added up to produce an
overall score, which is compared to the scores of other individuals on that scale
Does a low score necessarily indicate a low level of the trait, or does that score reflect in part a
tendency to disagree with items in general?
• To avoid this uncertainty, they make roughly half the items of a scale reverse-coded or negatively-
keyed items
• Negatively-keyed / reverse coded items – items for which responses indicating greater disagreement
will contribute to higher scores on a trait
• Such items are included due to differences among individuals in their general tendency to agree with
statements independently of the content of those statements (acquiescence)
• By having roughly equal numbers of regular and reverse-coded items, the tendency to agree or
disagree with statements In general is balanced out, with the result that higher scores on the scale
really do indicate higher levels and vice versa
2.5 STRATEGIES OF PERSONALITY INVENTORY CONSTRUCTION
• There are 3 basic strategies or approaches to developing personality inventories:
1. Empirical approach
2. Factor-analytic approach
3. Rational approach
1. THE EMPIRICAL STRATEGY
• Empirical strategy – items are selected empirically, on the basis of observed evidence of the
relations of those items with some other information that is believed to be a good indicator of the
individual’s level of a given trait
o The psychologist writes many items that together describe a very wide variety of behaviors,
thoughts and feelings.
o Then, self- or observer reports are obtained on this large pool of items from a large sample
of people.
o Then, some other information is obtained from these individuals (e.g. gender for a
masculinity-femininity trait), and it is used to decide which items should be kept to assess
the traits.
• Psychologist generates a large pool of items describing various actions, thoughts, feelings, and
characteristics.
• Items can also include self-reports or observer reports from a large sample of individuals.
• Psychologist gathers additional data from participants (e.g., external variables related to traits).
• Items are selected based on their empirical relationship with other variables indicating the trait
• Groups them based on how items relate to external variables
, Example:
• To measure the trait of "femininity versus masculinity" using the empirical approach, a
psychologist would select items that are empirically linked to a reliable indicator of this trait, such
as an individual's gender
• Items that show notable differences in responses between men and women would be considered
strong indicators of femininity or masculinity
• The psychologist would choose the items with the largest response differences between men and
women to best assess the trait.
• Items are selected purely based on their empirical associations, not their content or logical
connection to the trait (e.g., “I like to eat apples” could be chosen if it correlates with gender).
• This minimizes the ability to "fake" responses.
• Very important that the sample whose data is used for selecting items is very large
Advantages Disadvantages
• Sometimes the empirical strategy selects • An item selected on the basis of its
items that have no obvious relevance to a observed associations with a given variable
trait. This is advantageous, because within a certain sample might not show
individuals would not know how to fake such strong associations within every
responses. sample of individuals.
• If the sample is small, then the selected
items might have been related to the trait
simply by chance, making the results
unreliable
• Very different sets of items might be
selected, depending on the sample of
individuals that is used as the source
• Very different sets of items can be
selected, depending on the variable that is
used as the indicator of the trait
Ways to reduce the impact of the criticisms:
• If the items are selected based on empirical relationships across several different samples, the
items are more likely to produce a valid and consistent scale, reducing the impact of sample-
specific results.
• Selecting items based on empirical relations with multiple variables (all valid indicators of the
trait) can help ensure that the chosen items create a more reliable and accurate scale.
•
However, these procedures may not be very practical since it is difficult to obtain several different,
large samples of individuals who can all be measured on several variables that are all good indicators
of a given trait
TEXTBOOK – 2.1, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, CHAPTER 3
2.1 THE IDEA OF A PERSONALITY TRAIT
Personality trait – differences among individuals in a typical tendency to behave, think or feel in some
conceptually related ways, across a variety of relevant situations and across some fairly long period of time
…Differences Among Individuals
• The description of an individual’s personality is meaningful only to the extent that it gives us, directly
or indirectly, a comparison with others
… In a Typical Tendency to Behave, Think, or Feel
• The likelihood of showing some behaviors or having some thoughts or feelings
• One may have a relatively strong inclination or predisposition to exhibit those behaviors, thoughts or
feelings
• It includes not only external or behavioral aspects, but also the internal aspects, shown by their
ideas and emotions
… In Some Conceptually Related Ways
• A trait is expressed by various behaviors, thoughts and feelings that appear to have some common
psychological element
• A trait can be expressed in ways that superficially appears to be quite different
• Behaviors can all look different from each other but might all reflect the same trait
… Across a Variety of Relevant Situations
• A personality trait is shown across a variety of settings in which people differ in trait-relevant
behavior
… Over Some Fairly Long Period of Time
• There is some pattern that can be observed over the long run
• The idea of a trait is that there is some reasonably stable, long-lasting tendency to show the relevant
pattern of behaviors
2.4 MEASURING TRAITS BY SELF- OR OBSERVER REPORT: STRUCTURED PERSONALITY
INVENTORIES
• Self and observer reports are the methods frequently used by psychologists
• Structured personality inventories – questionnaires that offer a predetermined set of options for
responding to various items
, • Unstructured personality inventories – an inventory that allows people to respond freely
• Most personality inventories assess several different personality traits
• Each trait is assessed by its own scale , which contains different items
o An individual’s response to the items of a given scale are averaged / added up to produce an
overall score, which is compared to the scores of other individuals on that scale
Does a low score necessarily indicate a low level of the trait, or does that score reflect in part a
tendency to disagree with items in general?
• To avoid this uncertainty, they make roughly half the items of a scale reverse-coded or negatively-
keyed items
• Negatively-keyed / reverse coded items – items for which responses indicating greater disagreement
will contribute to higher scores on a trait
• Such items are included due to differences among individuals in their general tendency to agree with
statements independently of the content of those statements (acquiescence)
• By having roughly equal numbers of regular and reverse-coded items, the tendency to agree or
disagree with statements In general is balanced out, with the result that higher scores on the scale
really do indicate higher levels and vice versa
2.5 STRATEGIES OF PERSONALITY INVENTORY CONSTRUCTION
• There are 3 basic strategies or approaches to developing personality inventories:
1. Empirical approach
2. Factor-analytic approach
3. Rational approach
1. THE EMPIRICAL STRATEGY
• Empirical strategy – items are selected empirically, on the basis of observed evidence of the
relations of those items with some other information that is believed to be a good indicator of the
individual’s level of a given trait
o The psychologist writes many items that together describe a very wide variety of behaviors,
thoughts and feelings.
o Then, self- or observer reports are obtained on this large pool of items from a large sample
of people.
o Then, some other information is obtained from these individuals (e.g. gender for a
masculinity-femininity trait), and it is used to decide which items should be kept to assess
the traits.
• Psychologist generates a large pool of items describing various actions, thoughts, feelings, and
characteristics.
• Items can also include self-reports or observer reports from a large sample of individuals.
• Psychologist gathers additional data from participants (e.g., external variables related to traits).
• Items are selected based on their empirical relationship with other variables indicating the trait
• Groups them based on how items relate to external variables
, Example:
• To measure the trait of "femininity versus masculinity" using the empirical approach, a
psychologist would select items that are empirically linked to a reliable indicator of this trait, such
as an individual's gender
• Items that show notable differences in responses between men and women would be considered
strong indicators of femininity or masculinity
• The psychologist would choose the items with the largest response differences between men and
women to best assess the trait.
• Items are selected purely based on their empirical associations, not their content or logical
connection to the trait (e.g., “I like to eat apples” could be chosen if it correlates with gender).
• This minimizes the ability to "fake" responses.
• Very important that the sample whose data is used for selecting items is very large
Advantages Disadvantages
• Sometimes the empirical strategy selects • An item selected on the basis of its
items that have no obvious relevance to a observed associations with a given variable
trait. This is advantageous, because within a certain sample might not show
individuals would not know how to fake such strong associations within every
responses. sample of individuals.
• If the sample is small, then the selected
items might have been related to the trait
simply by chance, making the results
unreliable
• Very different sets of items might be
selected, depending on the sample of
individuals that is used as the source
• Very different sets of items can be
selected, depending on the variable that is
used as the indicator of the trait
Ways to reduce the impact of the criticisms:
• If the items are selected based on empirical relationships across several different samples, the
items are more likely to produce a valid and consistent scale, reducing the impact of sample-
specific results.
• Selecting items based on empirical relations with multiple variables (all valid indicators of the
trait) can help ensure that the chosen items create a more reliable and accurate scale.
•
However, these procedures may not be very practical since it is difficult to obtain several different,
large samples of individuals who can all be measured on several variables that are all good indicators
of a given trait
